Shop My Stash: May and June 2017

Shop My Stash 2017 is just about to hit the midway mark!Six months into this endeavour and I’m still going strong! I’m making my way through my collection and finding all sorts of products that I forgot about. It’s been a great exercise of discovery!

For those who are just joining us…

What is a Shop My Stash?

It’s exactly what it sounds like. Every month, I will be going into my makeup collection and – you guessed it – I will shop my stash. ? Just think of it as a haul post but instead of makeup I bought at Sephora or at Shoppers Drug Mart, it’s a haul straight from my own collection! And I’m hoping that by doing this monthly, I won’t get bored of the products I chose like I did in last year’s Project Pan.

How Shop My Stash Works

Every month I will take one or two of these types of products and put them in a basket.

Face primer

Color correction (none this month)

Concealer

Foundation / BB Cream

Blush

Highlighter

Bronzer (none this month)

Setting powder

Pore reducer

Eye primer

Eye shadow (palette or singles)

Eyeliner

Brow

Brow setting gel

Mascara primer

Mascara

Setting Spray

If you haven’t noticed, I did not include any lip products (lipstick, lipgloss, etc.) to my list. This is because they are already in rotation in my purse. I change them around a lot so I didn’t think they needed special attention like the rest of these products!

At the end of each month I will have to make a few decisions: keep the product, continue using it (for those holy grail products I must always use) or get rid of it. I’m hoping that by doing this I can help identify my loves and get rid of what I don’t want anymore. I hope that I can get my collection under control.

Don’t get me wrong, though. I am not going to be limited to only using what’s in my basket. If there’s something I want to use then by all means, I will! The basket is just there to help give me something to focus on that month.

Then at the end of the month, I will summarize my monthly basket (what I loved, what I didn’t love, etc.) and then I will pick out a new basket of products!

Shop My Stash for May and June 2017

Because my April basket was used up to about the second week of April, I decided to use this next basket for the rest of May and into the month of June. I don’t mind adding a little extra time cause that just allows me to use up more of these products.

May and June’s basket is not that extensive. I am starting to realize that there are some types of products where I only have one product left and I won’t have to cycle through them anymore. A good example of this is my brow gel. I only have one now – the MAC Brow Set in Clear – so I have decided that this is going to be the last Shop My Stash it will be a part of. Also, by keeping a small basket of goodies and concentrating on certain products, the likelihood of finishing products is higher.

So that’s it for now. It’s a pretty good basket of products! I am wondering if a month and a half is too long and I will get antsy and use more than what’s in the basket. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course! But I do need to concentrate on some products so I can have more empties and start throwing more out. The goal at the end of the day is to downsize my collection. My April one didn’t really identify much that I should get rid of so I need to improve that aspect of my Shop My Stash.

Ah well, this will always be a work in progress! I believe that as long as I continue on this route, my collection will shrink naturally. It just takes time. 🙂